


Come Back from a Dozen Wars Alive

by notyouranswer (gorgeouschaos)



Series: Glimpses Through the Mirror [3]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Dark, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Winter Soldier-ification of Matt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:01:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25600000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/notyouranswer
Summary: Matt forgets his prayers, first.He’s spitting blood into a nameless Hydra doctor’s face when he realizes he doesn’t remember how the Our Father starts.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Matt Murdock, James "Bucky" Barnes & Matt Murdock, Matt Murdock & Avengers Team, Matt Murdock & Natasha Romanov
Series: Glimpses Through the Mirror [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1855483
Comments: 28
Kudos: 97





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings/Disclaimers:  
> -This is not canon compliant in any way, shape, or form. Hella playing with the timeline here to make everything fit. So, uh. Sorry for discrepancies.  
> -Italics means Russian, because I don’t speak nearly enough to write dialogue.  
> -Two slashes indicates a POV change  
> -Assume any/all warnings which apply to the Avengers movies, specifically regarding Bucky and Natasha’s past, as well as anything from Daredevil. There is also some implied/referenced rape and sexual assault/harassment. Feel free to hit me up in the comments or on Tumblr if you’d like clarification/more information.  
> A/N:  
> Oh boy. Here we go.  
> Matt is ~15 at the start of this fic.  
> Title from “and a horse with greenblue eyes walks on the sun” by Charles Bukowski.  
> Updates will most likely be sporadic, as life is unpredictable right now. I wanted to post chapter one because, even though my other Daredevil fic is stalled out right now, I missed the fandom. Also because comments feed my soul.

The church doors creak open as Father Lantom begins the Our Father. From his corner of the pew, behind his fellow St. Agnes residents, Matt cocks his head, listening intently. It’s a Wednesday morning mass-- not usually very popular.

The stranger seats himself in the very last row. Matt’s nostrils flare minutely as he catches a whiff of gun oil.

Matt goes through the rest of Mass on auto-pilot, keeping his attention on the stranger with a gun.

After Mass, the stranger approaches Sister Maggie. The conversation that ensues is carried out in murmurs, but Matt hears all of it from the pew where he’s waiting for the nun to escort him back across the street.

“Can I help you?” Sister Maggie is polite but cool. Matt suspects she knows something is off.

“I hope so. My name is Brock Rumlow and I’ve been sent to follow-up on Matthew Murdock by Stick.”

Sister Maggie’s voice becomes decidedly warmer. “I see. Matthew is here, in fact-- Matthew?” She raises her voice to call to him. Matt pretends to be startled.

“Yes, Sister?”

“Come here, please. There’s a Mr. Rumlow here on behalf of Stick. We’re just in front of the altar, about ten feet in front of you.”

Matt works his way to them, taking the time to combat the anticipation seeping through his veins.

Stick said they were done, but maybe this man is a compromise?

Matt isn’t sure if he’s feeling hope or dread at the prospect.

He comes to an expectant halt after Sister Maggie touches his arm.

“Hello, Mr. Rumlow,” Matt says, facing the blur of heat to his left.

“Good to meet you, Matthew,” Rumlow says. He doesn’t offer his hand. “May we speak privately?”

“Sure.”

Sister Maggie inhales as if about to say something but doesn’t for a moment.

“I’ll be right outside, Matthew,” she says.

The second the doors shut behind her, Rumlow throws a punch.

Matt ducks under it neatly, hands raised, and then freezes.

“Thought so,” Rumlow says. Matt doesn’t like the satisfaction in his voice.”You heard from Stick lately, kid?”

Matt lifts his chin defiantly and remains silent.

Rumlow sighs. “The stoic type, huh? Tell you what. Come with me and I won’t have my man on the park bench shoot the nun.”

Matt’s hands tighten around the handle of his cane.

“Come on, Matty, I know you can tell I’m telling the truth.”

He is. 

“Where are we going?” Matt asks through gritted teeth. He refuses to wince as Rumlow grabs his arm.

“We’re going to say hi to Stick. Now tell the nun you want to come with me and let me fill out the foster paperwork. If you’re a good boy, nobody gets hurt.”

“Liar,” Matt says.

Rumlow doesn’t bother to respond.

Rumlow shoves Matt into the backseat of a car. It smells like chemicals but not new-- a rental car, Matt guesses. Matt’s cane clatters to the sidewalk.

There’s another man in the backseat who handcuffs Matt’s hands behind his back.

“Where are we going?” Matt asks, not expecting an answer.

He doesn’t have the space to dodge the backhand that gets him. 

“Don’t think about trying to run,” Rumlow says from the driver’s seat. “We’ve got eyes everywhere. And it wouldn’t be you we’d come for first, so even if you’re the martyr type, we’d get that pretty nun of yours first. Then maybe that priest guy.”

Matt sits in silence for the rest of the drive, feeling his skin begin to swell.

He loses track of Sister Maggie’s heartbeat after seventeen blocks.

He loses track of New York after three hours.

Matt is pushed out of the car after four hours of driving. 

He thinks about running as the man from the backseat drags him towards some sort of large metal vehicle. 

Rumlow draws his gun and points it at Matt’s head. “Just remember who would pay for it, Matty,” he says. 

Matt resigns himself to getting into whatever this vehicle is.

He can’t quite tell what it is. He’s heard about helicopters, and he’d even seen a few when he was a kid, but it doesn’t feel like it has the rotors on the top. It’s not shaped the same as a plane, though.

The man who had been in the backseat seats himself in the front, behind what Matt assumes is a steering wheel of some sort. Rumlow sits by Matt.

When the vehicle lifts off the ground Matt yelps and then bites his tongue.

Rumlow laughs. “It’s called a quinjet, Matty. Get used to them.”

Matt recites the Our Father internally as his world on fire shrinks to include only the inside of the quinjet.

He doesn’t know what’s going on but he can’t let the nuns and Father Lantom pay for whatever it is.

Six hours later Matt is jolted from his daze by the sound of the radio in the cockpit of the quinjet.

“ _Rumlow_ ?” An unfamiliar voice inquires. “ _Were you successful_?”

Matt doesn’t know that that means, but the language sounds like the one Sister Katerina uses with the younger children sometimes. 

_Russia?_ Matt thinks, trying to bury his panic. _What the hell am I doing in Russia?_

“Yes, sir,” Rumlow responds. 

“ _Fantastic. I am looking forward to meeting you, Matthew..._ ” The radio disconnects with a short burst of static.

“Alexander Pierce is looking forward to meeting you,” Rumlow tells Matt.

“Rumlow,” the pilot warns.

“Ain’t like he’s gonna remember any of this,” Rumlow says, but he says nothing more.

Matt is led into a large, echoing building, and then into an elevator which takes him to a cold, vast concrete floor.

He tilts his head, trying to get a sense of his surroundings. There are rooms and there are cells, by the feel of the bars in front of some of the rooms.

Only one is currently occupied. The person inside sounds like a large man. His left arm sounds... strange, though. Echoes bounce off of it almost like they would with metal, but it doesn’t smell like any metal Matt has ever encountered.

The man smells like blood and his breathing and heartbeat are unnaturally slow.

“Got you a partner, Soldier,” Rumlow says to the man. “Gotta get him trained up properly, but in a few years he should be about as tough as you are.”

The man doesn’t respond. His heartbeat does not change.

“You’ll see,” Rumlow says.

Matt is ushered into the cell adjacent to the one with the man with the strange arm.

“You’re going to spend a lot of time with me, Matty,” Rumlow murmurs, locking one cuff of Matt’s handcuffs to a metal loop in the wall. “We’re going to have a lot of fun together.”

Matt fights for all he’s worth.

He resists everything; he puts up enough of a fight that the guards have to work in groups of four when they take him to the labs. 

He starts picking his battles. He lets them think he’s breaking and then tries to run. It nearly works once or twice.

He starts breaking.

Matt forgets his prayers, first. 

He’s spitting blood into a nameless Hydra doctor’s face when he realizes he doesn’t remember how the Our Father starts.

The realization stuns him enough that he doesn’t even try to avoid the syringe headed for his arm.

As fire races through his veins and he begins to scream, the only word that he can remember is _amen._

“Amen, amen, amen,” Matt whispers, rocking back and forth in the corner of the cell he now shares with the man with the strange arm.

The man says nothing. He never does.

Matt forgets his father’s voice next, thrashing in a chair that’s sending shocks through his skull. The Soldier watches silently.

Then his life before Hydra disappears, gone as he lies shaking and screaming in the Soldier’s unsure but steady arms.

Then he forgets his name. 

The Devil throws up in the corner of their cell the first time he is ordered to execute someone. He does not understand why he feels sick. 

The Soldier tentatively rubs his hand over the Devil’s back. The Devil falls asleep with one arm loosely thrown across the Soldier's chest.

The Soldier and the Devil become inseparable 

**I** t is between years eight and nine of the Devil’s training and after seventeen successful missions with his partner when the Winter Soldier is killed saving the Devil’s life. The Soldier takes a bullet to the head, collapses, and does not get up again.

The Devil completes the mission and drags his partner’s body back to the pickup point. He finds himself hoping against hope that he is wrong about the severity of the Soldier’s injury.

He is not wrong.

He is punished for wasting time, and the Soldier’s body is burned unceremoniously, and the Devil loses his arm three missions later, careless because he forgot for just one moment that the Soldier is dead and did not watch his back. Thanks to the same serum which flowed through the Soldier’s veins, the Devil does not die from blood loss or shock.

The serum is also the reason that the Devil does not die when the doctors attach the Soldier’s arm to the Devil’s left shoulder using no anesthesia.

The Devil’s handler watches as he screams. The Devil did not believe he was capable of hatred, anymore, but hearing his handler’s heart speed up with excitement, the Devil wonders.

He screams, but he does not beg, and he survives.

(And as they toss him into his cell with his dead partner’s arm dangling from his shoulder, an ember in his chest he thought long extinguished smolders.)

After-- after. 

After, the Devil is assigned a new partner. The young woman who walks into his cell as he crouches in the corner walks with perfect grace. 

Her heart is pounding. She smells like fear. 

“ _My name is Natalia_ ,” she says. She kneels in front of him, just far enough away to be non-threatening, just close enough to be intimate. “ _And I am to be your new partner_.”

Matt tilts his head, just a little. He waits. 

“ _I knew the Soldier_ ,” she whispers. She is telling the truth.

He makes his decision. He nods.

“ _I am the Devil_ ,” he tells this ‘Natalia’.

“ _I know_.”

They settle into a not uncomfortable silence.

One mission and five days later, Natalia lies curled on the concrete floor, letting out the occasional gasp of pain. 

She is injured, and she is cold. They both are. They are paying for being caught on camera.

The Devil cautiously places his right hand on her shoulder, missing the Soldier as keenly as his phantom left arm. She does not attempt to kill him, so the Devil wraps his arm around her. 

The two of them wind up curled together on the floor. 

The next time they are sent out, the Black Widow and the Devil leave no traces.

As a reward, they are allowed to sleep in a small room instead of a cell. It even has a bed.

They share the bed. Natalia does not mind. She trusts the Devil, to some extent. She does not doubt he would be willing to kill her, but he seems to possess the same sort of respect for her that the Soldier had. 

The two of them wake with their legs tangled together. 

_Like children_ , Natalia thinks upon waking. The Devil stirs but does not open his eyes. She allows herself to release some of the tension in her shoulders. 

Rumlow enters the room and the tension seeps back into Natalia immediately. The Devil is on his feet before the door finishes opening.

“ _No greeting for me, Natalia_?” Rumlow asks. His eyes rove over her breasts in a way she is all too familiar with. She very carefully does not clench her fists. From the corner of her eye, she catches the Devil’s metal fingers twitch minutely.

“ _I do not answer to you_ ,” she says evenly.

Rumlow laughs, but his eyes remain cold. “ _Oh, I know. It’s a shame. Perhaps I’ll have to ask about making a trade. My Devil for you, hmm? Just for a few nights. I just want a taste, after all._ ”

Natalia understands what her partner’s gesture meant, now. She stays silent. In all likelihood, it’s too late, but she refuses to make things worse for the two of them. 

Rumlow shakes his head in mock disapproval. “ _No response? Ah, well._ ” He looks away from her at last. “ _We have a mission for you._ ”

Natalia dares speak about it only when she and the Devil are barricaded into an apartment in Jakarta and they have made sure they are not being surveilled.

“I… I did not realize,” she says. She cannot make herself meet her partner’s eyes, even if eye contact would mean nothing to him.

The Devil responds in Russian. “ _Realize what?_ ”

Natalia takes the hint. “ _That you would pay for my mistakes_.”

The Devil’s mouth twitches. “ _Is that not what partners are for?_ ” His voice is too resigned to be angry.

Natalia shrugs and the conversation is over. 

Neither of them ever mention it again, and neither of them ever apologize. Not after the days filled with blood and gunshots and running, not after the nights filled with bit-off screams and knives and “training”. 

They are partners, and they do not feel the need to say anything more.

The Devil does not stop missing the Soldier, but Natalia fits him just as well. His dead partner’s arm does not stop hurting, as ill-fitting and heavy as it is, but he becomes accustomed to the pain, and his new strength is useful.

The Devil and the Black Widow carve a swathe of destruction across the globe, and the Devil allows himself to believe she will stay.

It is on their twenty-first mission when the Devil and the Black Widow meet Hawkeye.


	2. Bang

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't the longest chapter, but I wanted to post something, so here you are.   
> No promises on updates, but I'll do my best to post within the next few weeks.   
> Also, I think having had the Soldier and Natasha to care about would have kept Matt a little more… human than the Soldier was. So.  
> As always, thanks for reading, hope you like it, and I love feedback :)

Hydra had debated what Natalia and the Devil’s cover story would be. Ultimately, the handlers had decided to have her pose as a wealthy blind oligarch’s trophy wife. The Devil is to be said wealthy blind oligarch. 

He and Natalia check into a five-star hotel. Once they are in their room, they conduct an exhaustive sweep for any covert listening devices. They find and crush two. 

It feels strange to wear glasses and use a cane  ~~ again ~~ ~~.~~

(He does not remember before. He does not. He  _ doesn’t _ \--) 

The thousand dollar suit he is wearing is unnervingly comfortable after at least a decade of tac suits. The Devil does not exhibit his discomfort. Natalia detects it anyway. 

“ _ What is it _ ?”

The Devil says, “ _ I am unused to wearing things like this _ .”

“ _ Tell me about it _ .” Natalia runs a hand through her hair. “ _ I hate wearing heels. _ ”

After a moment of consideration, the Devil allows himself to snort. He trusts Natalia with everything he is. He trusts her not to tell his handler about his display of emotion.

“ _ I should change _ ,” she says. “ _ The party is in an hour and the limo will be here in forty minutes _ .”

“ _ It takes forty minutes to get ready? _ ”

Natalia sighs. “ _ When you wear makeup it does _ .”

“ _ You look fine to me. _ ”

“Your opinion doesn’t count when you can’t see, Devil.”

She tosses a pillow at him and heads into the bathroom.

When they arrive at the party, Natalia escorts the Devil from the limo and into the ballroom. The attention which falls on the two of them makes the Devil wish he was far, far away. His handler told him not to hide or explain his left arm, and the Devil will follow his orders, but he is sure it is drawing attention.

Then again, he is blind and clearly foreign, so that’s rather a foregone conclusion. 

“ _ Our esteemed host is the man ten meters to our left, _ ” Natalia whispers. The Devil doubts anyone else in the room could have heard it. 

The Devil inclines his head. Natalia leads him in the direction she indicated.

Natalia is charming, as she never fails to be; the Devil plays the role of the doting husband. The poison is in his hand when an unfamiliar male voice interrupts Natalia’s sparkling laughter. 

“And who might this absolute vision be?”

The Devil slips the vial back into his pocket.

Natalia giggles-- a noise which the Devil privately thinks could not be less suiting to her personality-- and extends a hand towards the newcomer. 

“Nadia Sokolova,” she says. “This is my husband, Matvei. And who are you?”

Hearing the name--  ~~ his name ~~ \-- sends a bolt of pain through the Devil’s skull. He ignores it with the ease of long practice. 

“Dave,” the man says. It’s a lie. “Dave Hudson. I’m here with my company. Feel a little awkward, being only a millionaire and all.” He chuckles. “Why have you two elected to attend? I’m sure the noted oligarch Matvei Sokolov has many demands on his time.”

He’s testing them. 

He knows. 

Natalia’s heartbeat speeds up almost imperceptibly.

“None more important than my darling wife’s happiness,” the Devil says with a faint Russian accent. “Anything she wishes to have, I shall give to her.”

“I see.” Their host has by this point been pulled into another conversation. The Devil mentally curses this distraction. They cannot afford to fail.

‘Dave’ drops his voice to a whisper. “Give me a sign if you want to live.”

Natalia’s fingers twitch on the Devil’s arm.

The Devil says, “So, Dave, what was that company you worked for again?”

“I’m a defense contractor for SHIELD,” ‘Dave’ says. “Bows, arrows, that kind of thing.”

At the Devil’s side, Natalia’s breathing has quickened. 

“I see,” she says. “Would the Russians know you by a name similar to Sokolov?”

“That means hawk, right? Yeah, some people call me something like that.” 

The Devil realizes who he is speaking to. Somewhere in his chest-- and yet, strangely enough, it feels as though it emanates from the Soldier’s arm-- the person who had once been Matthew Murdock is screaming for him to give a sign. 

He hesitates as everything he is goes to war with everything he had once been. 

Natalia makes the decision for him.

“Matvei and I--” there’s the pain again-- “would love to discuss potential business contracts with you privately. Wouldn’t we, darling?”

The Devil knows what she means, as does Hawkeye. His handler would order him to kill the both of them.

He’s lost one partner. He’s not losing another. 

“Yes,” he says. It’s stilted and forced, but he says it. Natalia’s fingers loosen their vice-like grip on his arm. “Shall we seek a more private setting for our negotiations?”

“Certainly.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, hope you liked it, and I love hearing from y'all. Stay safe.


End file.
